Let’s talk about what not to write about in your college essay!
The other problem with this topic is it takes the focus off of yourself and onto another person. You want to ensure your essay is all about you. That's the person most important to the admissions committee, so put yourself first.Â
Romance and relationship drama makes for poor college essay topics because they are too personal and not relevant to the applicant's qualifications for admission. Admissions officers are focused on evaluating the applicant's academic potential, not their romantic endeavors. Essays on this topic come across as immature and could raise doubts about the applicant's ability to prioritize their studies over their love life.
Politics is a trickier sub-set of the extracurricular topics. Many students get fascinated by politics in high school, and generally thatâs a great thing. But, on top of the issues we explored above, there are additional problems involved in writing about them in your college essay.
Another college essay topic to avoid is “School was hard.”
If you’re an athlete, writing a college essay about a sports challenge you faced may seem like a no-brainer. “Sports challenges” include essays about winning the big game, losing the big game, making (or not making) the team, and even getting a nasty sports injury. However interesting the sports challenge itself was, though, these typically make for bad college essays topics. (Again, meaning they’re tough to write well in ways that stand out.)
Why is that? Like the mission trip essay, a sports challenge college essay is very common. Since one of the main goals of the essay is to help you stand out, it doesn’t really help to do the same thing that countless other people are doing. For example, almost everyone writing about losing the big game ends up writing the same “lessons learned” about humility, teamwork, overcoming disappointment, etc.
And another big reason to avoid the sports challenge college essay is that you have to use so many words to explain the context of the big game, what the major plays were, the ultimate outcome, and so on. This doesn’t leave much room for or even stylistic writing, so you are left with an admission essay that mostly codes you as “generic athlete” in the eyes of the committee.
Another thing these essays have in common with sports essays is that you will inevitably spend much of your essay word count describing what the performance is, how you actually performed, what made the performance great (or not so great), and so on. This gives you less room to humanize yourself and emphasize how and why the skills you used to face this challenge make you an ideal college student.
College essay topics to avoid include anything illegal or unethical.
First, this is one of the most common college essay topics that admissions committees receive. Some committee members may be annoyed at seeing “yet another one” in their stack of essays. And even if the committee is fine with a mission trip essay, so many people write them that it’s going to be hard to not sound like hundreds of other applicants.
What Not to Write About in a College Essay
Sometimes, what makes a topic a bad college essay is that it doesn’t really do anything new. And that’s the case when it comes to the cliche immigration essay.
11 Topics to Avoid in College Essays | Post University
Does this mean there’s no way to write a good immigration-focused college essay? Of course not! But try to pick a more unique story related to your immigration experience. Not only will this help your application stand out, but a more unique topic can also help to humanize you as you describe the unexpected situations that you had to ultimately overcome.
College Essay Topics to Avoid · 1
5) Anything that you have nothing good to say about. It's absolutely valid to have parts of your life that are difficult to talk about, but don't talk about something you aren't ready to. Whatever your essay ends up being about, it should leave a positive impression on the admissions counselors. This is really hard to do if you're writing about a topic you feel overall negatively about. Side note: if you have something on your chest that you want to write about just to get it down on paper, I encourage you to do so! The personal essay process can be really good for reflection, I'd just suggest you do it for you and not for an essay you submit. However, during this process you may discover a part of your life that was related tangentially that you do feel positively about, in which case you might want to consider whether to write about that for a college essay!
What not to write about in a college essay!
However, there is one chief reason you should be wary of writing about your personal heroes: if you’re not careful, the essay ends up being more about the other person than yourself, which can lead to a reader feeling like “Your grandma sounds awesome. Too bad she’s not applying to college.”!
What NOT to Write About in Your College Application Essay
Many college essay prompts ask you to write about a time that you overcame a major challenge. There are many challenges students could potentially write about, and many choose to write about what they did after they received a bad grade.